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Introduction

When using the Shoretel phone system and the associated Shoretel communicator application you can setup your phone so users can find you at nearly any phone when you want by pressing a few buttons, or simply be sent to voice mail when you can't be reached.

This is done through the two Shoretel communicator features known as Call Handling Mode and Find me.

Note that this series of instructions is best done when sitting by your computer and your phone with Shoretel communicator.

Steps
(5 total)

1

Getting into Settings area

Open up your Shoretel communicator application either through the start menu or by right clicking the Shoretel logo in the task bar by the clock and choosing "Show Shoretel Communicator" Once you have opened up communicator you can choose Options from the Tools Menu.

2

Call Handling Modes

Shoretel has 5 call handling modes you can use. Although they have names such as Standard, In a Meeting, Out of Office, etc, for the most part they all operate the same (There are some exceptions discussed in other articles, so best to use as described if possible).

For this article we will use the Standard call handling mode as an example.
The attached screen shows a fairly standard setting.

3

Call Forwarding Options

In the Forward Calls section, the mode is set to forward if the call isn't answered or if the user is on the phone.
You can see the Forwarding destination is set to the users voice mail (This is default)

4

Caller Initiated forwarding

You can however then setup a few forwarding options, that your callers can select (example, press 1 or Press 0 to ____)

* First is the Enable calling additional phones option, this MUST be checked for voice mail, find me or press 0 to work on your extension

* Second is the "Enable voice mail Greeting Only" mode This you would use if you just want to make an announcement and allow users to press 1 or 0, but not go to voice mail.

* Enable Find Me can be turned on for any one of or none of the modes This is activated if a user presses 1 or can be used before your desk phone even rings. and can forward calls to an extension or outside number or numbers (setting up find me actions is below)

* The press 0 Destination can be set to any valid extension within the company

NOTE: these settings are unique to each call handling mode, so if you don't turn on Find me for out of office, but you do for Standard, you will only be called when in Standard Mode.

5

Setting up Find Me

If you choose to use the Find me Feature on any call handling mode you will need to do two things.

* First make sure you record a greeting that meets your settings, (For example if you choose "Enable find me before playing greeting" you will need to say in your message "I am sorry the system couldn't find me, but if you leave a message..... " or something similar)

* The second thing you should do is configure the settings on the page shown in the graphic to the right.

* As you can see you can choose multiple numbers to try find you at before sending the caller back to voice mail and the number of rings to try on each number.

* You can allso send the incoming caller ID. If you do not, you will see the office number when Find me Calls you.

* You can also set the system to record the callers name if no caller ID is found, or even require it no matter what.

NOTE: although you can turn find me on or off for any call handling mode, find me features are the same for all of your modes.

Conclusion

You may have to play around a bit with your settings to get them just right the first time, but they can be VERY helpful to your callers and yourself.

For more information check out the complete shoretel users guide referenced below. Please note that this is a generic Shoretel document and will not have specific screen shots to the system you may be using.

References

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